


Cassie and Visser Three

by mademoisellePlume, myrtu (albaoaurora)



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen, warning for torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1298176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mademoisellePlume/pseuds/mademoisellePlume, https://archiveofourown.org/users/albaoaurora/pseuds/myrtu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is ongoing, Cassie is the last free Animorph, and she's just been captured. And Visser Three wants some information.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cassie and Visser Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lia/gifts).



> Happy birthday Chromey! We hope this is suitably upsetting!
> 
> Writing by MademoisellePlume/TyrianTerror, art by Myrtu!

<Oh, dear me, look what we have here. The last vestige of the vaunted Animorphs. Cassie the Peace-Lover. Cassie the Pacifist. Cassie the Gentle. It’s nice to have you in for a visit.>

I glared at Visser Three, standing in front of me. His main eyes watched me, his familiar brilliant green eyes filled with malicious glee. His stalks eyes were turned away, one scanning the room, one watching his back. I sat on a chair, shackled at the wrists and ankles, and I strove to sit as though I was there by choice, chin raised haughtily, the way I could imagine Rachel raising it.

If Rachel could’ve chosen to raise anything for more than an hour every three days.

I refused to answer him, to do anything more than glare. He would get nothing from me.

<Playing the quiet game? It won’t last. I have all sorts of little toys to get the response I want from you. Or at least a few screams.>

Did he think I was scared? After everything that had happened in this war? I was about as soft and vulnerable as granite.

<Of course, you could always morph and escape. I bet you already know just what you’d turn into.>

He was right. I would have become a rhino, break free from these chains, and attack. But… I couldn’t.

When we resistance fighters had been overpowered, when there’d been too many to fight and I’d been bleeding and exhausted and hit with a tranq dart, I’d stumbled and fallen and demorphed. Then a co-rebel had stuck me with a needle, the emergency measure was in my bloodstream before she did the same to herself and her yeerk. Poor Elspeth 389 had leaked out of her ear, and dissolved into greenish-yellow pus.

The substance used by all of the surviving members of the resistance made our brains unsuitable for Yeerks. So we couldn’t give up our allies, our information, what vestige of freedom we still keep. But for me, it would’ve been gone the second I morphed, leaving me vulnerable the moment I demorphed.

And I couldn’t let my comrades fall. We merry few, the remnants of the YPM, the free Hork-Bajir, the humans, the auxiliary Animorphs, and me, the last Animorph. It used to be Ax and myself, the last two Animorphs. But we lose people all the time.

This meant that morphing was not an option for me.

There was just keeping my damn mouth shut.

I could do that.

<You seem to be distracted, Cassie.> A many-fingered hand hit a red button, and I screamed, my internal promise to keep my mouth shut spoiled almost as soon as I’d made it. <There we go. That should help you focus.>

My teeth snapped together with an audible click. I was as silent as the grave. I would not be used for information. I would not be entertainment for the yeerk inside that head.

<Come now, Cassie. You’ve lost. There’s too many soldiers around here for you to escape even if you did morph. Just forget about your pathetic remnants of rebellion.>

I spat on the ground in response.

The hand over the button wavered for a moment before pressing down firmly, holding the button down as if to make a point.

I bit down on my lower lip, refusing to open my mouth in a scream. The sound that I made instead was a slightly muffled groan of agony.

<You know, I think I see the problem here.> FWIP. FWIP. The tailblade struck over and over and I flinched every time. I knew how fast and deadly that tail could be. My shackles were broken, falling to pieces, and then the two forelegs struck out and knocked over the chair, sending me to the ground with it.

<This needs more of a PERSONAL touch.>

“Fuck you!” I snarl a profanity that didn’t suit my mouth, making my lips curl in an unfamiliar way.

<Not that personal.> The joke brought me to my feet, and I attacked him, grabbing and twisting one of those delicate Andalite arms.

The pained snort from Visser Three shouldn’t have made me pause, but it did. And then the blunt side of a tailblade knocked into my head and I went sprawling again.

<That just wasn’t polite at all, Cassie. And we were having such a friendly conversation.> The chair was kicked at me, and though I raised my hands to ward it off, I caught the back of it with my face. The wood would probably leave a very colourful black eye.

“I’m not saying anything to you.”

<In technicality, you’re saying something right now.>

I could scream with frustration.

Pushing myself up, I stood, facing the enemy once again. My skin itched with the need to shed my shape and take on a more effective one. I could maybe kill the Visser, and a wide swath of guards, but with all of the other Animorphs enslaved, they knew how many we could kill before we could be worn down. How many we could kill in two hours. There would be more than enough to take me down. They might even have someone I loved outside these walls. My parents. Jake. Forced to listen and know what was happening in here. As though being interrogated by him wasn’t bad enough.

The thought made me feel ill.

So did the kick to the stomach that knocked me over and made me dry heave.

It was a good thing I hadn’t eaten anything before we were attacked, I thought distantly, folding my arms over my stomach. Vomiting in these circumstances would have been extremely unpleasant.

I saw the legs moving again, and rolled before they made contact.

The button had been awful enough, and I understood Tobias’s behaviour after being saved from that Sub-Visser a little better after going through this interrogation. But this was an entirely different sort of awful. Tobias’d had the hope of eventual rescue, and he’d been attacked, from what I understand, with alternating pain and joy. This interrogation was simpler and far more hopeless. A simple beating, and no hope of any rescue. I was the biggest gun the resistance had really possessed.

The legs struck out again, and I gasped in pain as they kicked my back, knocking me out of how I’d curled around my stomach.

<You’re not used to so much pain in your weak human form.> There was a sort of mocking sympathy in the voice, and I decided then and there that there must have been some time spent infesting a human on the part of the Visser. I didn’t think he could have picked up this sort of cruel sarcasm from his current host. Really, sarcasm is an art best used and employed by humans. I remembered the sense of humour Ax used to have. Marco would complain that his sarcasm was so dry you couldn’t tell if it was sincere or not. I missed that.

<Just tell me about what’s left of your pathetic movement.> Marco had always said that:  sarcasm was really what humans had over every other species they’d encountered. A well-developed sense of irony. I tried to remember the time he and I had ‘groveled’ before the Helmacrons. I tried to keep thinking of anything other than my current circumstance.

Visser Three didn’t like to be ignored by his prisoner. The tailblade whipped through the air and hit the back of my head. It hurt intensely, and my hands flew to the back of my head. My short, springy hair was wet, and my fingers were red when I pulled them away.

A blue hand grabbed my wrist and held my hand in front of face. <This will only get worse, Cassie. There’s no hope for your cause, so you may as well just tell me.> Oddly enough, all I focused on was the green nails. Painted. It made me feel slightly nauseous. Maybe because it reminded me of the colour of the yellowish green pus that my friend and fellow rebel had turned into.

“Do you really think I’m ever going to give up hoping?” I asked simply, looking past my bloody hand to meet brilliant green eyes. “No one should ever give up hope. We haven’t lost yet.”

The barrage started to come down then. Kicks and blows from the tail were interspersed with demand after demand that I tell him what I knew. I couldn’t have spoken if I had given in, there was no time given for me to take a breath, let alone talk.

The powerful tail hit me in the stomach one last time, the length of the tail delivering the blow, not the blade. I cried out in pain, tears streaming from my eyes. Then I felt myself being grabbed, a hand grasping my hair, an arm around my middle. The fingers in my hair adjusted their hold, the green nails digging into my skin. The skin began to tingle where they touched.

I considered just going limp and being dead weight, since there was little chance Andalite limbs could hold me up for long. And then the tail was at my neck, and I scrambled to get my legs under me properly.

<I saw you noticing my nails, human. Do you like them? I quite enjoy this little tradition you humans have. Of course, I improved it. We yeerks always improve what we’re given. I incorporated some nekthar venom into the paint I used.>

Of course he did. My skin was slowly going numb around his fingertips pressed into my face. I swallowed hard. I had never agreed very strongly with my friends on the ‘rather die than be infested’ stance they took. There was Aftran, there was the YPM. I’d always privately thought that maybe I could convince a Yeerk to defect, given enough time. Life was a precious thing, not to be tossed aside so freely.

But now I balanced precariously between wishing the tailblade would cut my throat and protect what little slice of freedom was left in today’s world and desperately wanting to just live.

<This is the last chance you have to talk, my friend.> He told me in a hatefully conversational tone.

I shuddered, and there was a moment of silence that stretched out until a door opened automatically with a hiss.

I was dropped to the ground, folding up like a lawn chair, and I felt the force of a hoof weighing on my head as Visser Three turned to the newcomer.

Through teary eyes, I saw the first ever Andalite-Controller looking at the second. Visser One had a special interest in us, having fought us all these years. He trained his stalk eyes on me, smiling with them in a nasty way.

<Visser Three. I wanted to come congratulate you on your promotion, and see if your new host was giving you any trouble.> Esplin 9466 walked over, standing next to the new Visser Three and kicking me with his insulting casualness. <Is Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill giving you any trouble? Andalites can be hard to break to bridle, especially when you come up across their personal moral barriers.>

<No, sir. Thank you, sir. He’s an irritant, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. He has tortured before on the Yeerk-Killer’s orders, and it disturbed him greatly then, so this is hurting him quite a lot. He was harder to manage at the beginning of this little interrogation.> The Yeerk that piloted my friend was smug as hell, and I burned with anger for Ax.

Tobias and I had saved him from the crushing depths of the ocean by picking up on his messages. And at that moment he was being reminded of the torture he’d done before. Torture he’d sworn never to repeat.

<We’ve got a special cell prepared. Biofilters at the doors, no cracks in the walls. We’ll leave her in there to suffer from her wounds, to get hungry and thirsty, and then we’ll see if she’ll talk. Maybe next we’ll bring in the blond terror to work her over. Visser Four says her host was dreading the possibility.>

<Splendid idea, sir.>

I turned my head up as much as I could, and both Vissers looked down at me, old Andalite and young. “It’s… not your fault, Ax.” I managed to get out, and his eyes went wide and so very sad for three long seconds.

Then they hardened again. A hoof landed heavily on the middle of my forearm with a hideous crack and pain that made me scream

 


End file.
